Perfect Victim (38 page)

“No,” he said, “except the time she took a bath.” Hooker forgot he’d testified just minutes before that she was allowed to bathe “once or twice a week.”

But no one seemed to catch this, Papendick let it drop, and Hooker continued with his narrative.

Having Colleen sign the slavery contract was Jan’s idea, he asserted. Cameron first found the article in Inside News, but when he showed it to Jan, she said, “Wow, what if something like this really existed!” and suggested that if Colleen were afraid of retaliation by a “company,” she wouldn’t go to the police.

After Colleen signed the contract, she was allowed to come upstairs every night. She did a few chores and joined them at the dinner table. It sounded quite homey.

Hooker admitted, without the slightest note of contrition, that he’d started subjecting her to “attention drills,” during which she had to strip off her clothes and stand at attention in a doorway.

He began the drills one day after his brother came over unannounced, and she “didn’t move quite as quick as I wanted” when he rushed her down to the basement.

The drills, he said, were “to impress the fact that the contract wasn’t just a piece of paper by itself.”

But her attitude “started going downhill really fast” after she signed the contract, Hooker said. Unlike previous times, when she had a “sweet attitude,” now she was depressed. He blamed this partially on Jan, who “was treating her like a slave,” giving her orders and yelling at her.

Did Hooker ever punish her?

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I always talked to Colleen with a soft voice. All I had to do was raise my voice or talk to her harshly.”

Worried about the dramatic change in her attitude, Jan and Cameron came up with another plan. They decided to tell Colleen that, though it had never been done before and it was expensive, they were going to “buy her out” of the Company.

“At first she didn’t know what to think,” Hooker said.

But once he told her the buy-out had been accomplished, she cheered up.

Not long after this, Cameron told her they were planning to move in a few months and asked if she would “hang around” and help. She said that would be fine.

Still, he conceded, Colleen slept in the box or the workshop, and she was treated like a slave.

But when they moved to the mobile home Cameron found putting Colleen into the box inconvenient. Except when they had visitors, she was kept unrestrained in the back bathroom, since he was “about to let her go anyway to see if she believed in the Company.”

Hooker blithely went along with his story, apparently unconcerned by the apparent contradiction that though he had told Colleen he had bought her out of the Company, he was still, as he put it, “trying to drive the Company down her throat.” He admitted telling her “little stories” to remind her of the threat of the Company, but denied having threatened her family.

Meanwhile, he and Colleen were taking regular excursions up into the mountains to cut posts, and, he claimed, Colleen’s attitude was “really happy.” During this time “everything was really perfect” in Hooker’s opinion. He was delighted to have Colleen as his slave — “what I really wanted out of Jan.” He practiced bondage with her in the woods a couple of times, and they hugged, kissed, and indulged in a little petting.

“Was this affection part of her slavery?” Papendick asked.

“No.”

“Why was there no intercourse?”

“I was still trying to keep my promise to Jan,” said Hooker.

By now, in Cameron’s narrative, he’d already agreed on a time to set Colleen free, and they were counting down the weeks.

To his surprise, Colleen came into the kitchen one Sunday, sat down, and asked if her current freedom would continue if she stayed. He told her it would, and she told him she wanted to stay.

“I was kinda shocked,” he said, but he opened his arms and said: “Welcome to the family!”

Hooker testified that Colleen told him she didn’t want to get back into drugs, “plus I’d promised she could have a baby.” She only asked that he guarantee he “wouldn’t make her go home.” She said every time she got close to someone, they ran her off.

“What was Jan’s reaction?” Papendick asked.

“She wanted Colleen to leave, but I pretty much shined her on because I’d fallen in love with Colleen very deeply.”

In Hooker’s version of the next several months, Jan treated Colleen “really rough, trying everything to get her to leave.” it was Jan who usually punished Colleen; he only did on rare occasions under pressure from Jan, because, he said, “I had to live with Jan, too.”

Once when he’d hung Colleen up he left briefly to look for some straps. When he returned he found Jan had taped electrical wires to Colleen’s thighs. She held a switch in her hand. Cameron pulled out the plug, then suffered recriminations from both women: Colleen “got after me for interfering,” and Jan “told me it was none of my business,” he said. “I was stunned.”

Shortly after this episode, Jan burned Colleen with matches.

But by now Cameron had learned his lesson: “I just stayed out of it.”

Jan was now working at various jobs, and “she went out drinking after work,” Hooker told the court. “She wasn’t home much.” Colleen took care of the children “all day and night” while Jan was dating other men, drinking, and going to parties.”

“At first it bothered me a little,” he said, “but I was in love with Colleen, and I figured Jan would find someone else.”

He said he and Colleen were having sex and “light bondage” on a regular basis, but insisted this wasn’t forced. “She was willing to have my child, and we were talking about possibly getting married.”

The slave collar “kinda became a wedding band.” When the collar came off he pierced her labia, he said, adding casually that this is “fairly common among S/M and B and D fans, and that’s what we worked out.”

On that note, the judge declared the noon recess, and journalists, nearly jubilant over Hooker’s colorful testimony, rushed up to Defense Attorney Papendick to garner quotes. Papendick obliged, saying that Colleen “was a willing participant” in the relationship, and that a “turning point” came when Hooker had offered to take Colleen home but she’d opted to stay.

After lunch, Papendick asked Hooker whether Colleen showed him any affection after she was out of the box.

“Yes, she met me at the door with makeup on and hugged me.”

“Did she ask you to have sex with her?”

“Well, in some ways. I’d be sitting, watching TV, and she’d sit on the floor, put her hands on my knees, her head on her hands, and look up at me,” he said, smiling. “She knew what that did to me.”

“Did you talk about the Company during this period?”

“No, not unless she asked.” Still, she believed he was a strong member in the Company. He didn’t want to tell her the truth because, he said, “I was afraid I’d lose her. She looked up to powerful people.”

Hooker’s narrative continued in its same unrepentant and slightly cocky tone. Mcguire meanwhile madly scribbled notes.

And the jury listened impassively, betraying nothing.

Cameron testified that about a month before the planned trip to Riverside, Janice heard their older daughter call Colleen “Mommy.” She “blew up quit her job, and stopped dating.

Cameron told Colleen it might be best if she left, so she went around and said goodbye to the neighbors. Then, for a week, she was in the box, “out of sight of the kids,” he said.

There was no obedience test with a shotgun, and no talk of the Company. Still, he admitted taking Colleen over to his parents’ barn to hang her up. It was “good for pictures.”

The original plan was to take Colleen home for good — spending one last night together — but on the way down, they had a change of heart and talked of Colleen coming back to Red Bluff.

Once Colleen got down to Riverside and called home, she became so excited that they forgot about spending the night together, and Cameron took her directly to see her family.

He was left to kill time alone. The next night he called at about nine P.m., and Colleen said she was ready to go. He went to pick her up and was introduced to the family as “Mike” because “I had one mother-in-law enough, and I didn’t want them dropping in on me.”

After leaving, they stopped at a 7-Eleven store and Cameron explained to Colleen that Jan was really upset, and “things might get rough” because Jan didn’t want her around the kids anymore.

While Colleen considered this, he went in and bought a couple of Cokes. When he came out, she put her arms around his neck, told him she loved him, and said she could handle Jan.

When they got home, Hooker testified, there was no one there. They made love on the floor and then he put her in the box while he went to get Jan and the kids, who were at her parents.

Janice was so insistent about keeping Colleen away from the girls that they wouldn’t see her again for three years. During that time, Hooker testified, there was no sex and virtually no bondage between him and Colleen because “she wasn’t free anymore, and it just wasn’t the same.”

“Did you complain to Jan?” Papendick asked.

“Yeah, but Jan was really fixed on the idea of not letting Colleen around the kids.” It was a long time until they stopped asking about “Kay,” which made Jan only more hardened in her resolve.

But in 1982, while Jan was in the hospital for a week, Colleen was out of the box most of the time. He hung her up, but there was no sex. Rather, Colleen got angry at him for “not doing enough to push Jan” about letting her out of the box, and they had a fight. He put her back in the box, went to pick up Janice from the hospital, and when he got back found that Colleen had kicked out the bottom of the box…but it was “designed to be that way,” he added. “Particle board won’t hold wood screws.”

Papendick asked if Colleen stayed in the box.

She was out at night, Hooker said, and she helped Jan when the kids weren’t around.

Gradually, the two got over their hostilities and became friends. While Hooker was at work and the girls were at school, Colleen was out of the box, and the two women spent more and more time together. They cleaned, did macrame, and read the Bible.

Hooker added that he’d never ordered Colleen to do anything that he didn’t help her do, but Jan would order her to do anything she didn’t like.

In 1984, Colleen gave Cameron an ultimatum, he said. “She couldn’t handle the way things were going,” and since Jan said it was okay for Colleen to be around the girls now, she was let out once again. She got a job, and she and Jan started going to church together.

“What was Jan and Colleen’s relationship?” Papendick asked.

“Good. They were getting along better than ever.”

The defense attorney asked about their financial situation, and Hooker explained they were short of cash at that time, so most of Colleen’s paychecks went into a general fund, used to pay bills. She kept twenty dollars out of each paycheck, but “that was about what me and Jan had to spend, too.”

Papendick asked if he had intended to get more slaves.

Hooker said that he’d threatened to at one time, but he didn’t really intend to.

Papendick turned to some of the physical evidence. He carefully took Hooker through it, asking about piece after piece.

Cameron had fairly innocuous explanations for most of it. The knife, for example, wasn’t the one he’d abducted Colleen with, but was instead one he used for carving plaster of Paris sculptures.

And he picked up the 1976 issue of Oui magazine (with Dr. Timothy Leary’s article) at the dump in 1984.

Papendick now led the defendant up to the day in August when Colleen and Jan left.

They had “asked if they could have that night to themselves,” Hooker said, and they slept together on the floor. To Cameron’s surprise, Colleen called him from the bus station the next day.

She said she was leaving, that she knew the story of the Company wasn’t true, and she didn’t want to cause a divorce. it was time for her to go home, she told him.

“I told her I loved her and stuff like that,” he said, and asked that she call when she got home. “I was crying. Saying goodbye was hard.”

A day and a half after she returned, Colleen phoned after midnight, “and told me she missed me.” She encouraged him to get back together with his wife “for the kids’ sake.” Five or six days later Janice moved back in with him.

Papendick asked if, after Jan moved back, they continued to practice bondage.

“Once or twice,” Hooker said.

“Did you promise to stop?”

Hooker said he had. “After I went to the pastor, and he told me it was wrong and everything, I tried to back off on it.”

“Did Colleen indicate that she wanted to come back to Red Bluff?”

Colleen wrote that she did, Cameron said. Her father had some property nearby, and Hooker volunteered to put in a drip system for some trees.

“Did you talk about seeing each other again?”

“To a point,” he said. Colleen was going to come up and see them, but she didn’t want to come between him and Jan, who “was scared” about Colleen moving back. “She said it would end our marriage,” he said.

Hooker’s first day of testimony came to a close, propelling the “sex slave” case back into the headlines. Newspapers were splashed with stories about the “hen-pecked husband” caught between a jealous wife and a slave who refused to leave.

It made good copy, but Deputy DA Mcguire was dismayed that the news coverage cast Hooker in such a positive light, especially in Red Bluff, where many were still convinced of his innocence. She heard that many of her colleagues believed she was losing the case — even Lt. Jerry Brown thought so.

Hooker began his second day on the stand on Monday, October 22. Under questioning, he maintained that Colleen had willingly posed for him in bondage positions. And he portrayed a strange but legal bondage triangle — with Colleen staking out Jan, and Jan hanging and whipping Colleen and Cameron.

Hooker declared that Colleen was in love with him (telling him this almost every day), and was content with her position as a slave. He’d told Colleen she could leave — on the condition that she tell no one about the Company — but she’d stayed because she was grateful to get off drugs and have a home and because she wanted a child.